The Moon Pool [Hardcover]

A. Merritt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 2003

Subjects: Science fiction Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Wildside Press (September 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809532980
• ISBN-13: 978-0809532988
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,559,420 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars THE MOON POOL by Abraham Merritt, April 22, 2011

By 

thepaxdomini "The Book Review" (Tulsa, OK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Moon Pool (Paperback)

The Moon Pool is a 1919 "lost world" fantasy novel by Abraham Merritt based on two of his short stories. Here, a scientist leads a small band beneath the surface of the Earth in pursuit of others abducted by an evil entity called "the Shining One," whereupon they discover a lost civilization on the brink of war.

Merritt's writing is wonderfully imaginative and extraordinarily detailed. His ideas, his places, his devices, and his underground world are enthralling. The Moon Pool does have a certain charm. And yet the writing has a lot of problems.

Pacing is the most egregious issue. The book crawls in many places, and for long stretches. This shouldn't be; there's plenty happening in the story, but Merritt's writing ranges between verbose and extremely verbose. The storytelling is further hampered by a cast of flattish characters spouting corny dialogue, a great deal of which neither develops the characters in meaningful ways nor moves the story along.

Merritt devotes paragraph upon paragraph to his vivid descriptions of subterranean wonders, and yet the reader's sense of place is often poor, as Merritt can scarcely ever be bothered to tell the reader where, specifically, his characters are, or where that might be in relation to the other places he's depicted.

There are other issues. It's painfully convenient how quickly all the characters learn the subterranean language. Much of the mystery of the underground world isn't resolved until much too late in the book, and then by way of a massive expository dump. The book's climax, an epic clash between warring factions, should be exciting, but the resolutions are clichéd and predictable.

The Moon Pool has been cited as an influence on Lovecraft's "Call of Cthulhu." As far as horrific creatures emerging from lost cities beneath the sea to ravage humanity go, that seems reasonable. Beyond some basic thematic similarities, however, there's really no comparison.

Merritt isn't read a great deal these days, and now you know why. On the whole, The Moon Pool feels like a missed opportunity, and it's too bad. As it is, there are no doubt plenty of better books in the genre. And yet...The Moon Pool would probably make a pretty good film.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars HATED THIS BOOK!!!, December 10, 2009

By 

J. Cruz "Christ for the Nation" (Tampa, FL) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Moon Pool (Hardcover)

TO start with, the characters are extremely stale when it comes to dicersity. The author does a lousy job of translating the image he saw in his head for this mystical world within the "moon pool" onto paper. In my opinion it seemed like the entire time the characters were doing the same things over and over again...getting caught, escaping, getting caught, ect. One thing the author does very well is explain the theology of this mysterious under world. Asides from that, this book had no lasting effect on me.